Heaven Without You
by Mousme
Summary: Tag/coda/thing to 5.16. Sam gets kidnapped by hunters who have nothing good in mind for him. Cue Dean to the rescue. T for swearing.


Title: **Heaven Without You**  
Summary: Sam gets taken by hunters, who have nothing pleasant in mind for him.  
Spoilers: Gigantic, massive spoilers for 5.16, and general spoilers for all of Season 5.  
Word Count: 7,842  
Warnings: The usual bad language, a bit of gore.  
Disclaimer: I'm not so much playing in Kripke's sandbox as I am standing with my nose pressed right up to the fence that keeps me away from the sandbox, sighing longingly at all the shiny toys in it. In short: not mine, please don't sue.  
Neurotic Author's Note: Congratulations,** authoressnebula**, on finishing your thesis! You rock! Have some hurt!Sam and protective!Dean as your reward. :)  
Neurotic Author's Note #2: I watched 5.16 yesterday and it broke me even worse than 5.14, and I didn't think that was possible. It made me SO GODDAMNED SAD that I had to make an attempt to fix things in my head, and this is the result.  
Neurotic Author's Note #3: No beta, very little revision, and I'm not 100% happy with some of it, but I'm posting anyway, because history has shown me that my neuroses often have very little basis in reality.  
Neurotic Author's Note #4: *cough* Yeah, I know, I could have been writing my BigBang, but, you know how it goes...

*

Getting jumped by regular humans is bad enough, even if those humans are seasoned hunters. Getting jumped by regular humans twice in almost as many days? That's humiliating. At least the first time he and Dean had the excuse of both being really hungover after trying to rid themselves of the memory of a really shitty week. This time? Sam has no such excuse, and he's all alone, to boot. No one to share in this particular humiliation except for the people who got the drop on him to begin with. He freezes where he's sitting on the park bench, the feel of the gun barrel against his spine making chills run through him. Sure, it's easy enough for other people to joke about how many times he and Dean have died over the past few years: they're not the ones on the receiving end of the bullets, or the knives, or the really sharp pieces of wood being driven through their guts, and that shit really hurts. Dean seems to take it better than he does, but then again, he doesn't know what's going through Dean's mind these days.

"You're a hard man to kill," Walt's voice is clear and harsh. "But we've dealt with quasi-immortal freaks before."

Sam shifts uncomfortably. "You want to point that pea-shooter somewhere else, Walt? You may as well give it up now. Shooting me is just a waste of a good bullet. Why don't you just fuck off and go be self-righteous at someone else?" he can't quite keep the tiredness out of his voice.

"You know what? You're right. We can't kill you. But you want to know another thing?" Walt's voice drops to a low growl. "Being a hunter, you learn to improvise. So there's a change of plans. We're not going to kill you, Sam. We're just going to make you wish you were dead."

Roy appears at Sam's elbow, shotgun levelled at his chest. Then he drops the muzzle of the gun, presses it against Sam's knee, pulls the trigger. There's an explosion of white and red behind Sam's eyelids, and then everything goes dark.

*

"All right, buddy. I'm cutting you off. Go home."

The bartender is cute, with curly black hair and sparkly blue eyes that kind of remind him of Castiel's —except that Castiel's eyes never look that happy about anything. There was a time, Dean reflects bitterly, that he'd have her phone number by now and the promise of a date which might or might not happen depending on how long they were in town. Tonight, though, all he's getting is a vaguely sympathetic smile and a gentle refusal to 'leave the bottle' the way he requested.

"Seriously, man," she says, giving his arm a pat. "I know the look. You've got someone waiting for you, probably worried sick by now. You need me to call you a cab?"

He shakes his head. "Sam's not waiting for me."

"Sure he is. Whatever happened, you should go talk to him. Either you forgive him or he forgives you, whatever needs to happen. But you need to stop sitting here and trying to drown in that shot glass. There isn't enough alcohol in the world that'll help."

"We're brothers," he clarifies. Force of habit. Too many people think they're gay anyway. Not that it matters. They're not really brothers anymore, anyway. Maybe they never were. Sam doesn't want a brother, it seems.

"All the more reason. Go on. Cab?"

"No. I'm close by."

"You're not driving, are you?"

"No. Not stupid, no matter what Sammy thinks."

"I doubt 'Sammy' thinks anything like that."

He snorts, shoves his hands in his pockets, then has to pull one free again to brace himself against the tables in order to keep his balance. The night is cool, and the fresh air helps to clear some of the alcohol-induced fog. He reaches up absently to tug at his necklace, but of course it's not there. Hasn't been for months, and never will be again, although apparently his hands never got that memo. He's nowhere near drunk enough, but there's nowhere to buy alcohol at this time of night, and he thinks he probably polished off the last of the whiskey the last time he insisted that Sam drink with him —and look how well that worked out.

The motel room is deserted when he gets back. He hasn't seen Sam since yesterday afternoon, when he left his kid brother in front of his laptop to go in search of alcohol-induced oblivion. Not that it worked. Maybe Sam's finally gone and fucked off in search of his perfect Dean-free lifestyle that he wants so damned much.

"See? Told you he wasn't waiting for me," he says to no one in particular.

He lets himself fall face-first onto his bed, and finds himself kind of hoping, just as he feels sleep claiming him, that he won't wake up in the morning.

*

The first thing Sam is aware of is pain. It's not the first time he's awakened alone, in pain and in the dark, and with a sinking feeling he figures that it's probably not going to be the last. He's lying on what feels like a concrete floor, damp and hard and cold, and when he tries to push himself to a sitting position pain flares white-hot through his leg. It's too dark to see just how bad the damage is, but he remembers Roy pulling the trigger on a twelve-gauge shotgun at point blank range, and he knows exactly what that means. He's actually surprised that his leg is still attached at all.

He shifts his weight again, grits his teeth, finds that one hand is shackled to the wall behind him. He flexes his free hand, and is ridiculously relieved when he feels the familiar weight of Dean's amulet near his wrist. If Dean ever finds out he retrieved it from the waste basket he'll kill him, but Sam isn't planning on having him ever find out. He's wrapped the cord around his wrist, finds himself rubbing the strangely-shaped little pendant with his thumb. Sam lets go of it, runs his free hand along his leg, trying to asses the damage, and winces. Definitely broken. There's blood crusting on his jeans, and even the slightest movement sends pain screaming through him.

Sam gives up trying to triage his own injuries, starts methodically searching through his pockets for his lock picks, a paper clip, anything, but it seems he's been pretty thoroughly stripped of anything that might be of use. His shoes and socks are gone, as is his watch and his jacket, leaving him with his destroyed jeans and a thin white t-shirt as sole protection against the cold and damp. He slumps against the wall, dizzy with pain, and tries to come up with a plan to get out of here, wherever here is.

There's a scraping sound, a bolt being drawn back, the loud click-clack of a deadbolt unlocking, and a thin ray of light spills into the room, revealing nothing but grey concrete all around. Walt steps inside, sets a portable lamp on the ground.

"Looks like Sleeping Beauty's decided to join us after all, Roy," he calls out, and without further preamble he draws his leg back and drives the toe of his boot directly into Sam's injured knee.

Sam screams, then, no matter what his intentions were to start with, his vision greying out with pain. He doesn't pass out entirely, though, comes to after a moment to find Walt standing over him, holding a knife. He holds the blade in front of Sam's eyes, lets the dim light play along its edges.

"So you can't die, is that it? " he chuckles quietly. "Well, let's just be grateful that you aren't immune to pain, too. I'm going to enjoy making you suffer, Sam. Make you scream and whine and beg, like a fucking dog."

Sam swallows hard. "Fuck you, Walt."

It's the last coherent thing he says for a very long time.

*

It feels like twenty elephants have set up a brass band in his head, and the light from the window won't stop shining in his goddamned face no matter how much he swears at it, so Dean gives up sleeping as a bad job and sits up. On the plus side, he thinks he might not puke, which is a mercy, and presses both hands gingerly to the sides of his head. He thinks his head might actually explode, and if that happens the angels will just bring him back again, the fuckers. He all but falls off the bed, staggers to the bathroom, takes a long-overdue piss, and swallows enough Tylenol to finish off whatever liver damage he's been causing with the alcohol, sticks his head under the cold water tap in the sink, and wonders if it's possible to drown standing up.

Castiel is sitting on the still-made bed near the far wall when he comes back out, and Dean jumps, setting off more kettle drums in his skull.

"Jesus, Cas!"

The angel doesn't look at him, keeps his gaze riveted to the wall. "I am not in your personal space, Dean. I was careful."

"I know, I just... maybe we need to work on knocking next, and maybe coming in through the door."

"Like a regular human?" This time Castiel does look at him, and the look in his eyes makes Dean wish he'd turn away again.

"It's way too early for this. I need a coffee before I can handle any more existential angst, either from you or Sam. Where is he, anyway?"

"I don't know. I assumed he was with you."

Dean stifles a groan. "God. As if having him moping wasn't bad enough, now he's gone off to mope where I can't find him," he looks around the room, as if Sam might suddenly materialize out of thin air. "Didn't leave a note, either. Remind me to beat that into him later."

"You wish me to remind you to inflict physical harm on your brother?"

"Never mind. I'm going to get breakfast. You coming?"

"Of course."

"Hang on a minute." He flips open his cell phone, hits the speed dial on the first number on his list, right above Cas' cell number. The line rings once, clicks over to voicemail, and Sam's voice, tinny and a bit distorted, speaks mechanically into his ear.

_This is Sam. Sorry I can't answer the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll call you back as soon as I can._

"Sam, Cas and I are going for breakfast at that place down the street. Meet us there if you get this." He scribbles a note to the same effect, leaves it on Sam's pillow, complete with a reminder that leaving notes concerning one's whereabouts is considered polite. A bit passive-aggressive, sure, but maybe this time Sam will get the fucking point.

Breakfast never tastes all that great on top of a hangover, but four cups of coffee go a long way to making him feel halfway human again. Castiel just sits across from him and watches him eat, and Dean wonders what it says about him that he stopped finding that creepy a long time ago. There's still no sign of Sam when they get back to the motel, although his duffel bag is still lying at the foot of his bed, half-unzipped, so Dean knows he hasn't tried to run off and join the circus or some equally ridiculous emo bullshit. He tries Sam's cell again.

_This is Sam. Sorry I can't answer the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll call you back as soon as I can._

"Sam, this isn't the time to be pulling an emo disappearing act. Call me, okay? Or better yet, come back. We're blowing this town the minute you're back." He blows out an exasperated breath, looks up to where Castiel is standing, staring back at him, and doesn't say a word.

There's nothing to say, anyway.

*

Sam's already lost track of the time. He doesn't know how long he was unconscious to begin with, and with his watch gone and no source of light at all, it's impossible to tell how much time is passing. Walt and Roy take turns coming into the small room where he's being held, although Walt seems to take a lot more pleasure in causing him as much pain as possible than his partner. Roy, it seems, is content with waking him every time Sam tries to get any sleep at all. A small part of Sam's mind starts spouting random factoids about the effects of sleep-deprivation, like a scrolling list behind his eyelids, and every so often pipes up with remarks about it being one of the more effective forms of torture out there. He tells his mind to shut up, and his mind ignores him.

Figures.

"Don't pass out on me, asshole," Walt kneels on the concrete next to him and drives a thumb into the deep gouge in Sam's shoulder, and Sam grits his teeth and barely manages not to scream, although the groan that escapes him is obviously satisfactory enough. "You still with me?"

"Fuck. You."

"And here I thought you were the college-educated one. Not all that imaginative, Sammy."

"It'd be wasted on you."

Instead of replying, Walt simply gets to his feet and drives his heel repeatedly into Sam's ribs, until Sam is curled on the floor and choking on his own blood. It's as good a response as any, Sam decides. Who needs imagination when you have hobnailed boots, a knife and a tire iron? He rests his forehead against the damp floor, feels blood dripping from his nose, and closes his fist around Dean's pendant. He doesn't know why they let him keep it, but he's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Dean isn't going to come for him. He realized this early on in the process. Even if Dean wanted to find him, he probably doesn't have the first idea where to look, and Sam is pretty sure Dean doesn't want to find him, doesn't want to have anything to do with him. Not that Sam can blame him. There's only so many fuck-ups that Dean should have to forgive, and their little stint in the Matrix version of heaven only convinced Dean more that Sam never cared about him at all. It's all a lie, of course, but there was no way to tell him or show him what was really going on behind those memories, and maybe it's time Sam realized that Dean doesn't owe it to him to listen to his explanations and rationalisations anymore.

So he hangs onto the pendant, feels its sharp edges dig into his palm, and tries very hard not to think about all the things he's done that made Dean deliberately throw away their relationship right in front of him.

*

"Dammit, Cas, I've looked in every singled goddamned nook and cranny in this stupid goddamned town, and it's like he vanished off the face of the goddamned planet!"

Dean is frantic, pacing, cell phone still clutched in his hand, although he switched it off several minutes ago. Castiel is sitting quietly in a chair in the motel room, watching him pace with that infuriating air of angelic... calm, poise, whatever it is that only serves to drive Dean even more nuts.

"I am sure that isn't the case."

"Not helping!"

There's nothing. Not a damned trace of Sam except for a park bench with bloodstains and gouges torn in it by the blast from what looks like a twelve-gauge shotgun. It points to humans, at least, and not angels, not Lucifer, nothing supernatural, and that's the kicker: there's no supernatural trail to follow, which would maybe make it easier, or at least more familiar. He flicks open his phone again.

_This is Sam. Sorry I can't answer the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll call you back as soon as I can._

"Shit!" he manages just barely to refrain from throwing the phone against the wall. "You don't think he just left, do you? He wouldn't do that, right? Just leave all his stuff here and go?"

"I'm sure he wouldn't do that."

"The blood could have belonged to anybody, right?"

"It could," Cas acknowledges.

"I mean, I saw it, same as he did. His version of heaven? Free of Dean. Maybe he just decided to act on that after all."

Dean paces some more. It would be so much easier if he could just believe that Sam left of his own volition, that he dumped Dean's sorry pathetic ass right then and there and went off to try and live his own life. So much easier to ignore the congealing blood on the bench, the splinters of wood, the scattered buckshot. Sam's always wanted to be clear of the family. Always the one with the guts to walk away while Dean picks the path of least resistance, stands to attention like a good little fucking soldier, stands there and takes the hits because he's too fucking stupid to get out of the way. He doesn't want to go after Sam, and there's a voice that's louder than all the other voices bouncing around in Dean's head that screams at him _what if you go after him and he doesn't want to come back?_

Castiel gets up from his chair, is standing in front of him in the blink of an eye, both hands on Dean's shoulders. "We will find him. I will help you search."

"What if he doesn't want to be found?"

"We will find him anyway. We almost found God, what makes you think Sam will be more difficult?"

Dean snorts at that, his throat constricting. "I drove him away, Cas. Took the one thing he ever gave me that mattered, and I threw it away. What kind of person does that?"

There's no answer, but he knows exactly what Cas is thinking, the word 'worthless' echoing between them. Cas might have said it first, but Dean believed him, was so anxious to believe him... because as far as he was concerned the pendant was always an extension of himself. He never bothered to think what it meant to Sam, who kept it when he was dead, wore it like a precious relic, whose first gesture after clutching Dean to him like a drowning man when he came back was to give back the tiny piece of jewellery.

"Fuck it," he shoves his phone back into his pocket, rubs his hand over his mouth. "Someone has to have seen something. I'm going back to the park, and when I find the fuckers who did this to Sammy, there'll be hell to pay."

*

Sam decides arbitrarily that he's been locked in the room for five days. He figures it's been that long because he's started to hallucinate, and that's about how long it takes for that particular symptom of sleep deprivation to kick in. Sometimes it's less, but he's managed to catch an hour or so here and there, or it might be fifteen minutes or three hours for all he knows, and that means that it would take longer for the hallucinations to kick in. Lucifer is there from the start, of course, but Sam doesn't count him as a hallucination: he's more of a permanent nightmare, some sort of weird supernatural construct that lives constantly in his mind. He hasn't told Dean about the fact that he dreams of Lucifer every single night, and he wonders if Dean dreams of Michael the same way. No matter how he thinks about it, he decides it's a conversation he never wants to have with his brother. Of course, now he's not likely to have a conversation with him ever again, and that's probably for the best. At least now he's done with causing his brother pain.

Predictably, the first hallucination is one of his fourteen-year-old self, talking to him about setting a field on fire with his brother, and how it was the most awesome Fourth of July ever. Then the kid's eyes turn yellow and he grins at Sam, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a roman candle clutched in his fist, sending sparks up toward the low ceiling.

"Just like old times, isn't it?"

Sam tries to ignore them. Tries to ignore the small things that creep around in the shadows, the sound of chitinous carapaces clicking against the cement. Shuts his eyes and pretends he doesn't see his mother using his own Zippo lighter to set fire to her nightgown.

"I should have done this when I knew I was pregnant," she says calmly, as her hair is set alight with flame.

He almost welcomes the moments when Walt comes in to work him over some more. Neither he nor Roy have so much as brought him a cup of water. Maybe they're really testing to see if he can't die, and so far the test seems pretty conclusive. Sam thinks it's not really fair that getting fatally shot is easier to take than this, but then, life is never fair. _Life sucks and then you don't die_, he thinks, and laughs so hard he almost chokes, and Walt takes the opportunity to break two of the fingers on his left hand.

After a while the parade of _this-is-your-life-Sam-Winchester_ stops, and there's only Dean, squatting on his haunches in a corner of the room, watching him with eyes filled with reproach.

"I'm sorry," he whispers into the floor.

"You're always sorry," comes the dry answer.

"Doesn't mean it's not true."

"Doesn't change anything, either."

"I guess not."

When Dean stops talking, Lucifer takes over. He wears Nick's body until it's stretched so thin Sam can see tiny shafts of light breaking through its pores. It's beautiful, in its own way, and Lucifer is the only one who doesn't curse him with every breath. He crouches next to Sam, runs his hand through Sam's hair, and for a moment Sam manages to forget that he's lying in his own filth, that he can smell his leg rotting away beneath his blood-encrusted jeans.

"I know you don't believe me, but I do care for you. In a way, I care a lot more for your well-being than Dean ever did or ever will. I want to give you everything, Sam. Think about it. I know you've had to fight for everything good in your life. Just this once, you could let me just give it to you, instead of having to pour sweat, blood and tears into it, only to have it snatched away again."

Sam just shakes his head, curls up tighter on himself, clutches the pendant so tightly in his good hand that he feels it draw blood. Lucifer sits beside him, cross-legged on the floor, oblivious to the dirt and filth, keeps petting his hair. After a while, he starts humming under his breath.

"'s that Metallica?"

"I thought you'd find it calming."

Sam laughs. "Dean isn't coming."

"No, he's not."

*

Let it not be said that Dean Winchester can't accomplish anything he puts his mind to. It takes longer than he'd like to find what he's looking for, but he stays in the park where Sam was last seen and stops every single person he can find all day long, showing them a photo of Sam that's embarrassingly old but good enough that his brother is still recognizably himself. For the better part of half a day he gets nothing but 'No, sorry, never seen him,' from everyone he stops, until sometime in the evening when the people with dogs come out after work, and then he starts getting somewhere. Three people on their regular route remember seeing Sam on the bench, just minding his own business. One guy with a poodle (and Dean very judiciously doesn't comment about having such a girly dog, doesn't even look at the dog) remembers two guys heading over toward Sam as he was going by with his dog, and Dean clenches his fists so hard that his fingernails bite into his palm as he recognizes the descriptions the man gives.

"I didn't think too much of it," the guy admits, petting his dog's head. "They looked like they knew him, and Bitsy here was itching to get going."

"Did you see where they went after?"

The guy shakes his head. "Wasn't looking, sorry. But they were in a blue truck. One of those new ones with the four-door cab."

From there it's relatively easy to finagle the traffic camera footage from an impressionable young secretary at the local police station, and that gives him a direction to go in. It's hard to form a two-man (or one-man, one-angel in this case) search party, but pulling off the impossible is Dean Fucking Winchester's speciality, and so that's what he does, until he manages to track down a derelict farm house that's recently changed hands about five miles up the highway and just far enough off the beaten track to be exactly what he's looking for.

"How can you be sure this is where they are?" Castiel wants to know.

"I can't, but that's what I'd do if I wanted to kidnap a guy and keep him without attracting too much attention."

"They will not kill him." He isn't sure if it's a statement or a question, but he treats it like a question.

"No. I think we proved pretty conclusively that death isn't exactly an option for us anymore. When I get to those fuckers, I am going to rip. their lungs. out of their chests," he says grimly as he turns the Impala up the long dirt road that leads to the farm.

"Dean."

"No, Cas. I already promised them I'd come for them, and now this? Fuck 'em. They actively tried to kill us —would have succeeded if we weren't meant to be fucking angel condoms— and I'm sick and tired of watching my baby brother die in front of me, Cas. Once was already too much. I'm fucking tired of it all."

"You misunderstand."

"I do?"

Cas nods, his expression just as grim. "This time, I will help you."

Dean doesn't bother with subtle, this time around. He's done with subtle. He pulls up just out of sight of the farmhouse, shoves his Glock into the waistband of his jeans, snatches up his sawed-off, and strides toward the house. Roy and Walt are in plain sight in the kitchen, apparently so confident they won't be found that the stupid assholes are turning their backs to the window, and so he just kicks in the door and levels the shotgun at Walt's head. Walt is obviously the more douchebaggy of the two, and since Roy deferred to him, that makes Walt the greater threat.

"Floor, now!" he barks.

Walt is no one's fool, drops flat on his face before Dean can fill him full of buckshot, but Roy is apparently feeling suicidal, and makes a move to disarm Dean before he can fire. There's a rush of wind, and Cas is suddenly right behind him. There's a sickening crunching sound, and in the blink of an eye Roy is on the floor, his arm up at a horrific angle, his wrist clasped tightly in Cas' grip. Dean lowers the shotgun to within a few inches of the back of Walt's head.

"You remember when I said I'd be pissed off, Walt? Here's a tip: you should have left well enough alone."

*

Sam's being turned inside-out. He thinks he ought to be sick, but there's nothing in him left to throw up except blood and bile, and just the thought of it makes him hurt. Lucifer's gone, retreated to whatever parts of the world he's in, making plans, raising the dead, summoning horsemen, general apocalypse stuff, he thinks to himself with a hysterical giggle. It's all kind of funny, when he stops to think about it, and really, what else is there to do these days except think? Dean would be so disappointed: he's always going on about how Sammy thinks too much.

Except Dean's not here to be disappointed. Just a Dean-shaped hallucination, which is just fucking terrible. Sam finds himself praying to hallucinate his mother killing herself, rather than relive that particular nightmare. Anything is better than having to remind himself that Dean isn't really there. This Dean is kneeling next to him, placing a hand carefully over his own unbroken one, and his voice is unsteady.

"Sammy? You awake? Can you hear me?"

Dean sounds real, really and truly real, the gruff concern reaching right through Sam's defenses and making his heart ache. It's so cruel that, if he could, Sam would burst into tears. "Not real," he mutters, trying to pull away from the touch of calloused fingers. His voice cracks from disuse and thirst.

"Sam, come on. Talk to me. Please."

"No," he shakes his head with as much force as he can muster. "You're not really here. Dean's not coming. You're not real."

"God, Sammy..." The hand over his feels real, though, and just for a second he lets his fingers tighten around it, lets himself slip into that terrible, dangerous state of mind that allows him to _hope._

"Please stop. Please. Please stop." He starts up his mantra, the one that's kept him mostly sane. "Dean's not coming. You're not real. Not here. Dean's not coming." There's a terrible, spiking pain in his arm, the one shackled to the wall, and he whimpers.

"Easy, Sammy," the hallucination says softly. "Just give me a minute to get you out of this, okay? I know it hurts. I took care of the fuckers for you. They're not going to hurt you anymore, okay?"

He doesn't want to hear it. Shakes his head. Any minute now Dean is going to melt back into the shadows, and it will all start up again. Walt or Roy or Lucifer, or maybe one of those nameless, formless creatures that's been skittering around in the shadows. "Like huge fucking spiders," he says to no one in particular.

"You're not making any sense."

"Did you find him?"

Another voice adds itself to the mix, which is new, and nothing makes sense anymore, because of all the things he's seen that he knows aren't there, Castiel has never been among them, and it seems bizarre to start seeing him now. The pain in his arm worsens, then abruptly fades, and he's able to pull his hand in toward his chest. Then he feels himself being propped up, can smell Dean's jacket and his aftershave and the faint aroma of sweat, and he starts to shake, because Dean is real and there and he came.

"Shh, easy Sammy," Dean pulls him into his arms, holds on for dear life. "I gotcha."

"Oh God," Sam is whimpering and sobbing, clutching at Dean's shirt, can't seem to help himself. "Oh, God, you're real. You're real. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please... please be real, please, I'm so sorry..."

Dean's fingers bump against the pendant Sam is still clutching after all this time, but if he notices he doesn't say anything about it. "It's okay, Sammy. Nothing to be sorry for, you hear me? It's okay. We're going to get you out of here, okay? Cas? Give me a hand?"

Sam lets out another choking sob when Dean places both hands under his armpits. The pain in his leg flares white-hot as Dean hauls him to his feet, and he feels himself lose the tenuous hold he had on consciousness with another murmured apology.

*

Dean loses track of the days. Sam's a mess, but there's no way Dean can take him to a hospital. Even if they had money or some sort of insurance, which they don't these days, the apocalypse having sort of taken priority over everything else in their lives, the whole county is crawling with cops looking for any sort of suspicious activity, ever since a neighbour called in hearing shots fired at the old farmhouse.

So he smuggles Sam into a seedy motel room, spends a good chunk of their remaining cash on more first aid supplies, and enlists Cas to hold Sam down while he cuts off his brother's clothes and nearly vomits at the reek of infection that's coming off him. Sam's fist is clenched around something, and he pulls his hand away when Dean tries to pry his fingers apart enough to release it. It's his pendant, the one he threw away and assumed housekeeping either got rid of or kept in order to pawn it, and Dean's heart lurches so hard in his chest he thinks for a second that he might pass out. He curls Sam's fingers back around it, leaves well enough alone, turns to the things he knows he can fix.

He starts with the easy part, which is cleaning up the worst of the filth those two sons of bitches let Sam lie in for nearly a week. The best he can manage is a makeshift sponge bath, but it's better than nothing. He moves onto Sam's knee next, which is a shredded mess of inflamed flesh and pus, spends over an hour trying to clean out the horrific-looking wound while Sam shivers and whimpers and tries to jerk away from his touch, kept still only by Cas' iron grip. The shotgun blast took a chunk out of his thigh just above the knee, and it'll be a miracle if Sam ever walks normally again after this. Sam is covered in bruises, too, some of them half-healed, some of them fresh and angry-looking, mottling his ribcage, travelling all the way down past his hips. Roy and Walt weren't too shy about using knives to get their point across, either, or maybe a box cutter, by the looks of it. Dean keeps up a litany of curses under his breath as he works, cleaning and disinfecting and stitching as fast as he can manage, eyeing the laceration that starts above Sam's right eyebrow, bisecting it, that travels to a point midway down his cheek. No matter what he does, it's going to scar, and badly. He swears again, digs as far into his vocabulary as he can go and still doesn't find the right words.

"Does it help?"

His head jerks up in surprise from where he's splinting broken fingers, carefully taping them together. Castiel is sitting on the bed, Sam's head cradled in his lap, looking down at Sam as though he's some unfathomable alien creature. In a way, maybe he is, Dean thinks absently.

"What?"

"Does cursing the dead men help?"

"No, not really, but it's the best I can come up with on short notice."

After that, it's a waiting game. Day blurs into night and night into day, and for all Dean knows the apocalypse might already have taken place outside. The sky could have turned bright green and started raining frogs for all he cares. He can't remember the last time Sam was this sick, can't remember a time when Sam was sick at all, not as an adult, and he's never been so fucking helpless in his life. It doesn't help to remind himself that Sam can't die, because Sam is shivering and sweating as his fever burns unchecked, crying because he's in pain and delirious and doesn't understand what's happening to him. It's all just so fucking unfair that Dean wants to turn around and hit someone as hard as he can. Only there's no one around on whom to vent his frustration, so he just sits, and watches his brother toss and thrash on the bed. Cas comes back with antibiotics, and Dean doesn't even bother asking where he got them. The angel doesn't say anything, just stays in the background, silent and watchful, and Dean barely even notices when he leaves.

He parks himself next to Sam's bed, forces as much water and Gatorade into Sam as he'll take, wipes him down with a wet washcloth in a futile attempt to keep his temperature somewhere close to normal. Sam's unbroken hand stays clenched tightly around the damned pendant, the gesture accusing, and he stubbornly resists every attempt Dean makes to get it away from him.

"No," he mumbles after Dean's third try. "Please, no. Wanna keep it. 's Dean's. Gotta give it back to him when he gets back..."

"Sam, it's okay. You can have it, you just don't need to hold it all the time. Let me put it away."

"No!" Sam's eyes snap open, but whoever he's seeing, it's not Dean. "No, I have to keep it safe. Gonna give it back to Dean..." he sinks back onto the bed, eyes closing. "Can't give up. Doesn't believe me, but I do want this, I do..."

Dean's throat tightens, and he rubs a hand over his mouth. "It's okay, Sammy. I believe you," he says, but Sam doesn't hear him.

*

Everything's changed, but Sam can't make sense of it. He's hot and his whole body hurts, and every time he opens his eyes it feels as though he's trapped, being crushed under several dozen tons of water. He thinks he hears Dean's voice, half-expects to find himself alone and in the dark again, is constantly surprised when he doesn't. He tries to keep his eyes open, because every time he closes them Lucifer comes back, talks sweetly to him, and tells him that Dean is suffering because of him, that he's making his brother miserable, that every moment Dean spends with him puts him in danger. Sam tries to keep his eyes open as long as he can, so that he can see Dean, so that he doesn't have to listen to the constant murmur, but Lucifer is like the ocean lapping at the shore: inevitably the tide pulls him back under.

It's not real, he reminds himself. It's not real, and any moment he's going to wake up and Walt will be there with his knife, and everything will be the way it's supposed to be again.

"Not real," he says out loud, and flinches when he feels the pressure of someone's hand on his arm.

"Sammy," it's Dean's voice, rough and broken, and it takes all of Sam's resolve not to break himself. He shakes his head.

"Not coming. Not going to come. He shouldn't."

There's a hand on his forehead, fingers running through his hair. "Of course I had to come. I'll always come for you, you moron."

He's so damned tired. "No. He gave up. I saw it. Made sure I saw it. Held it up, waited until I was looking. Threw it out like... like trash. I couldn't leave it there. He gave up. I deserve it, I wrecked his life, but he gave up..."

"Sam..."

It hurts. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to talk. It hurts and all he wants is for it to stop hurting. He rubs the amulet with his thumb, has its outlines memorized. "I know what he saw," he's not sure why he's trying to explain this. "I know what he saw, and it hurt him. I always hurt him, even when I don't mean to. Fucking place, heaven... never showed the real memories. Rigged."

"Stop talking, Sam." But there's no stopping himself, now that he's started. It's important, and he has to explain it before the tide comes back to pull him in again.

"Not the real memories. Like... when he taught me to drive. Bought me my first beer."

"Sammy, please..."

"Came to my soccer championship match... Dad kept the trophy, but Dean came to the game. Not Dad, Dean. Always Dean."

"Shut up, would you?"

Sam forces his eyes open, startled by the pain he can hear in Dean's voice into thinking it might just be real, after all. "Dean?"

"Yeah. Yeah, Sammy, it's me."

It's not real. Can't be. "You sure?"

Dean huffs a laugh. "Sure, I'm sure."

He wants to believe the lie. Desperately wants to believe it. He can't move. Even trying to raise his head hurts. "I wanted you with me," he says, trying to meet Dean's eyes with his own. Even if Dean isn't real now, maybe one day he will be.

"I thought I told you to shut up."

"No... Dean, please. I know what you saw, but that wasn't it. Wasn't right. It was rigged, you know that, right?"

"Sure, Sammy. Just go back to sleep, okay?" Dean's hand is gentle against his face, and he feels a sudden wet warmth as his brother rubs a thumb under his eye. "It's okay."

Sam lets his eyes close, doesn't try to keep the tears in check. It's no use. "Not heaven without you," he murmurs, feels the tide comes rushing in.

*

Dean doesn't realize he's started crying at the same time as Sam until he feels the tears drip down his face. He scrubs at them with the back of his wrist, decides he doesn't care, and buries his head in his arms on Sam's bed, letting his breath hitch silently. Sam's not awake anyway, and Cas is gone wherever it is angels go when they have an existential crisis, and there's no one there to see him melt down, which is just fine by him. If he's going to have yet another emotional breakdown, he'd just as soon do it in private.

"I'm sorry too," he says softly, when he's sure Sam is too out of it to hear him. "I'm sorry I couldn't see it. And my memories hurt you too, I could see they did." He reaches out, pets Sam's hair, figures he owes him an explanation, even if it comes out all garbled. Sam won't hear it anyway. "I wanted them to hurt you, because I keep thinking you deserve it, even when I know you don't. I saw the way you looked at Mom, when she didn't see you, and I thought you deserved it. I didn't want to share her, when you were born. I thought maybe she'd love you more than me, I don't know. I was four, sue me. I don't think I ever told you that —I always hated talking about it. About her. And then after... she's always been mine. My mother, my memory. Not yours. I kind of figured you never deserved her. Not like I did. Is that screwed up, or what?"

He thinks he might just be the most fucked-up, selfish asshole that ever lived. Sam might have given him a good run for his money for the title, but his little brother never can compete with him when push comes to shove. And here he is, Dean Fucking Winchester, master of the impossible, or whatever, and he was too stupid to realize that heaven was running a rigged game, that in spite of all the overwhelming evidence, Zachariah was running the biggest mindfuck of them all, because it was so much easier to think that his brother hated him. Made it easier to give up, which is what he's wanted all along. An excuse to let it all go to hell, because who fucking died and made him Atlas, anyway?

He chokes. "Shit, Sammy... when did this all get so fucked up?" Sam shifts on the bed with a quiet moan, and he looks up. "Sam?"

"Hurts," Sam coughs, draws in a rattling breath. "Can't breathe. Tide's coming in," he adds, too confused to explain what he means.

Sam's already propped up with all the pillows Dean could find, but broken ribs are no one's idea of a good time, and Dean's starting to worry about pneumonia on top of everything else. He scrubs at the tears on his face again for good measure, then slides onto the bed, toeing off his boots. "Let's get you up, Sammy. It'll help you breathe easier," he says soothingly, trying not to wince as Sam lets out another whimper when he pulls him upright and settles behind him, letting Sam lean against his chest. "Better like that?"

Sam nods, resting his head on Dean's shoulder. Dean can feel the heat rolling off him in waves, but his breathing is steadier. He remembers now Sammy always used to get clingy when he was sick as a kid; stuck to Dean like a fucking barnacle (_Not Dad, Dean. Always Dean._) and Dean wonders how he ever managed to believe Sam wanted to get away from him.

"'s wrong?"

Dean sighs. "Everything."

"'s it me?"

"No. I wish it was. It'd make things easier. You're a fucking tempting target. "

Sam shifts uncomfortably against him. "You get it, right?" he asks, his voice small and anxious, and if it weren't for the fact that, even like this Sam is taller than he is, Dean would swear on a stack of Bibles that Sam's five years old again, asking if their Mommy left because he did something wrong. Except now he's asking for something that's both easier and ten times harder for Dean to give him.

"Yeah, I get it."

Sam reaches over for his hand, fumbling clumsily, and a moment later Dean feels a familiar weight in his palm.

"'s yours. I was just keeping it safe for you."

Reflexively Dean curls his fingers around the little bronze pendant, stares at it, hesitates; finally hooks the black cord back over his head, feels it settle into place like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle he hadn't realized was incomplete. He rests his cheek against the top of his brother's head, tells himself it's just because Sam is running a fever that he feels warmth spreading through him. He rubs Sam's shoulder.

"Go back to sleep, Sammy."


End file.
